Category: Mothering

March 13, 2017

Mitzi Bytes: Shoes Dropping All Over The Place

Last month I was lucky to be chosen as a first-reader for a new Canadian novel as part of the Harper Collins Canada First Look program. What a delight to read Mitzi Bytes, the first novel by indomitable blogger Kerry Clare whose words and thoughts I’ve long admired and giggled over. And due to this admiration, what a relief that I really did enjoy the book – whew!

Here’s the back-of-book blurb so you have the gist of the plot:

Sarah Lundy has a secret online life, and it might all come crashing down.

Back at the beginning of the new millennium, when the Internet was still unknown territory, Sarah Lundy started an anonymous blog documenting her return to the dating scene after a devastating divorce. The blog was funny, brutally honest and sometimes outrageous. Readers loved it. Through her blog persona, “Mitzi Bytes,” Sarah not only found her feet again, but she found her voice.

Fifteen years later, Sarah is happily remarried with children and she’s still blogging, but nobody IRL—not even her husband or best friends—knows about Mitzi. They don’t know that Sarah’s been documenting all her own exploits, as well as mining the experiences of those around her and sharing these stories with the world. Which means that Sarah is in serious trouble when threatening emails arrive from the mysterious Jane Q. Time’s up, the first one says. You’re officially found out.

As she tries to find out Jane Q’s identity before her secret online self is revealed to everyone, Sarah starts to discover that her loved ones have secrets of their own, and that stronger forces than she imagined are conspiring to turn her world upside down.

A grown-up Harriet the Spy for the digital age, Mitzi Bytes examines the bonds of family and friendship, and the truths we dare tell about ourselves—and others.

It’s funny to sit down and write a blog about a book about a blogger! But here we go. I’ve not read Harriet the Spy – but a quick internet search and synopsis-read reveals the book’s parallel/homage relationship to Mitzi Bytes, with protagonist Sarah’s blog serving as a modern-day notebook full of wonderings – not always kind – about those surrounding her now that her own life is happy but hum-drum and no longer exciting fodder for blog content.

I admire how utterly and absolutely author Kerry Clare captured Sarah’s life as a work-from-home, artistic-sort mom to two little kids of 5 and 7 years. I am just such a human, very much in the throes of balancing mom duties to two young kids, my work-for-pay from home, and my own creative work. I laughed and sighed and felt many feelings of camaraderie with Sarah. I had the sense throughout Mitzi Bytes that Sarah and I would be able to have a cup of tea and be instant kindred spirits. There is no doubt that I am the living, breathing demographic for Mitzi Bytes!

The part of Mitzi Bytes that was most unputtabledownable for me was when Sarah (who blogs under the pseudonym Mitzi Bytes) finally gets outed, the ramifications are as varied as are the characters she wrote about. It’s a fantastic array of reactions once the truth is out! As things fall apart for Sarah, I enjoyed this imagery:

“She’d been waiting for it. There were so many shoes. The sky was raining with them.”

I’m glad that Clare didn’t subject her protagonist Sarah to an about-face in personality upon her reckoning. Sarah is stubborn and complicated and lucky through to the end. She’s not an entirely likeable character, but she is utterly relatable – she feels real and dimensional, her inner dialogues like so many I’ve had with myself-as-audience over the years. I loved that Sarah was as much sorry about being caught as she was for hurting anyone she’d observed or portrayed in her Mitzi blog over the years. I couldn’t help but cheer for her in the end!

I so enjoyed the inclusion of Mitzi’s “archival blogs” that were well-woven in-between chapters, giving us a sense of Mitzi’s voice and evolution over time. I fact I would have happily read more of them – though to be left wanting more is probably a good thing. I had the urge to go check the Mitzi Bytes blog a number of times while I was reading, only to remember that it’s a fictional blog! It felt like a blog that could/should exist.

As someone who’s blogged a bit, sometimes regularly and sporadically of late, I enjoyed the descriptions of blogging now versus in the early 2000s throughout Mitzi Bytes. The ubiquity of blogging today is so different than 15 years ago when there were fewer options and the form was in it’s infancy. Clare is a master blogger herself – she teaches the art and work of it at university – and it’s interesting to see her thinking, experience, and evolution creep into Mitzi Bytes, giving me a real sense of “now” as I read.

***

PS: I’ve taken up my practice of cross stitch pattern design again after months away from it. Looking at the Mitzi Bytes cover, it struck me that it offered a great challenge to work with colour gradients. And so crafty readers, I humbly offer up my interpretation of the excellent graphic cover of Mitzi Bytes! If you’re a stitcher and you enjoy this image, you’re welcome to the pattern (download below) – I don’t have time to stitch it up right now, so if you do, please share!

Mitzi Bytes Cross Stitch pattern – pixels

Mitzi Bytes Cross Stitch pattern – pixels w/ symbols

*To save pattern, click on link, choose “export as pdf” under Files and save to desktop.*

July 19, 2015

Fallow Period, Brick & Mortar

Fallow: (Of farmland) ploughed and harrowed but left for a period without being sown in order to restore its fertility or to avoid surplus production. – Oxford Dictionary

After an intense fall and winter of stitching, stitching, stitching products for my Pocket Alchemy lines of baby things and little felt matryoshka dolls, I set that work aside and shifted my focus abruptly and dramatically when an amazing opportunity presented itself.

I’ve been busy with my dear friend and fellow maker Laurena Green, developing and opening Spool Lounge, a proper brick and mortar sewing studio and shop in downtown Barrie, Ontario. We opened just four whirlwind-months ago in early March!

Our story is told beautifully on our Sunday Crush profile so I won’t repeat it on this blog. Suffice to say that a lot of stars aligned suddenly and we leapt off a cliff and landed with a lovely shop and a buzzing business.

Then a mere six weeks after opening Spool Lounge, I missed a step while going downstairs in the 3am-darkness to grab a diaper for my wee lad and ruptured my achilles tendon. Which necessitated a major slow-down and has been really, really good for me, though challenging – particularly the mothering on a dodgy leg bit! Three months later I find myself here, just able to take my first unassisted steps on my nearly healed but now weak and tight left foot. Small mercy – it wasn’t my driving or sewing foot, whew!

I couldn’t resist embroidering my initial emergency room splint since it was wrapped in flannel and I had four days of waiting around to see a surgeon, soft tissue not being as urgent to treat as broken bones. I was then cast in a “pointy cast” – much to my dancer-self’s amusement – and the tendon was left alone to heal back together over six weeks. No surgery! Amazing. Now I’m in a walking cast and am slowly stretching the tendon back to a 90-degree standing position. Lots of physio and pilates to stretch and strengthen my depleted left ankle and side.

I’ve been doing lots of hand embroidery (heavenly!), teaching classes at Spool Lounge, learning to be a merchant (Wholesale Accounts! Customers! Marketing!) and balancing mothering and achilles rehab (with grace and success all the time, obviously!).

My boys are enjoying being shop kids and have adjusted remarkably well. They are now stitching up a storm themselves in fact!

And so now, after a delicious and required fallow period on my “own” work, I’m turning my weather-eye back to my matryoshkas, going to photograph the ones I have done and finish up some of the bigger dolls that I started in the fall. My embroidery stitches are refined and I’m excited to get back to my little ladies, who I’ll be able to work on in my new studio space!

November 12, 2013

Tooth Fairy Time

Of course we would hit this all important milestone when I was not particularly prepared. But it is here, 5-and-a-half-year-old Rudi lost his first tooth on the weekend. I knew it was loose but it didn’t seem that loose. However he managed to hit his face on a chair and the tooth popped right out. He was so surprised that he even forgot to cry about the face-hit! A very thrilled and proud boy is he.

Happily, luckily, I had the foresight a while ago to buy charming little blue tooth envelopes from Wildhorse Press (one of my absolute favourites, I highly recommend their cards and prints) for him to put his first few teeth into. Because I have not yet made a tooth pillow — it’s on the list of “Things I’m Determined to Do.” You know that list? Yeah …

For the actual tooth fairy work, I did some late-night googling to see what other people are doing. So much fun, I do love charming, mini things. And I shamelessly, happily sourced some creative and free printables from other artists, because they have done an amazing job and I am not a graphic designer. The tooth certificate is from Toys in the Dryer, I just downsized it when I printed it, and the little yellow tooth fairy envelope is from Handmade Charlotte.

The note I wrote myself using a 9-point Snell Roundhand font. I made sure to get in a reminder about eating fruits and veggies since fairies hold a lot more sway than I do in that department! I wrapped a book and added a Loonie (that’s a $1 coin in Canada) and we’re off, catapulted into yet another realm of growing-up-land, spinning some more magic.

October 31, 2013

Quick and Dirty Cowboy Accoutrement

I have been away from my blog for much of October, working on a project that shall remain secret till it is revealed next fall — oh anticipation! This much I can say: I am delighted and honoured that the project I working on is going to be included in Leanne Prain‘s upcoming book Strange Material: Storytelling Through Textiles with Arsenal Pulp Press. Very exciting. All shall be revealed upon publication in 2014.

Now about the cowboy pieces: it was just halloween! And as you probably know, I make costumes. 2-year-old Gene wore Rudi’s cowboy costume from a few years ago and Rudi, at 5, obviously wanted to be Spiderman, so I went ahead and bought a second-hand Spidey costume that fit the bill. I think he was particularly excited to have a store-bought costume after always having had homemade ones. Sometimes you have to admit when it’s not worth making yourself!

So I thought I was just going to sit back and work on other things, but at 8:35pm on October 30th my lovely husband texted me at the end of my yoga class to say if I wanted something fun to do on the way home I could find him a cowboy hat and belt! A last-minute cowboy: challenge accepted. I could only find a horrible foam hat from a dollar store before everything closed, but it did the trick. I will not dignify it by including it here though, it was sad. Project get-a-much-better-cowboy-hat is underway for future last minute cowboys. No belt luck. So my costuming head started whirring as I drove home.

I cut out 2 cardboard ovals, drew a longhorn and some stud details in hot glue, let it dry and covered it all in tin foil. Ta da! From a reasonable distance it looks like a true, huge ol’ cowboy buckle. I added a foil loop at the back and and it just slipped over a regular belt. Sorted.

Lastly, I dug out a felt holster I’d made for a costuming gig in the summer, which I wrote about here. The budget for that job was limited so I decided to use my own materials and time to make a holster for the sheriff character and just lend it to the production since I figured (rightly, hurray for foresight!) that it might come in handy in my house full of boys. I just didn’t expect the adult boy to be the first one who used it! The pistol stayed home during the work day since hubby teaches grade 4, but we pilfered our son’s sheriff badge and handkerchief and found some emergency stick-on moustaches in my costuming stash.

Cowboy accoutrement sorted and in bed before midnight. Yeeeeeeee-ha!

October 11, 2013

Apple Picking, Autumn Savouring

I grew up in Alberta where there are not a lot of fruit trees. And somehow, I have reached my mid-thirties without managing to pick a single apple from a tree. So when a friend suggested we take ourselves and our 2-year-old sons to Avalon Orchards, an organic orchard near Barrie, Ontario, I leapt at the chance.

We had a beautiful, crisp day to pick. The boys revelled in the wandering and the eating and the tripping over ground-fall. Eating different apples in quick succession was like sampling wine, tasting the different notes in each fruit, sweetness, spicy, tart. I just felt so absolutely, utterly good. Solid, sweetness-in-the-belly good — full of friendship, the freshest fruit and the nostril tingling, mustiness of nature hunkering down.

I love apple names, they sound so thrilling — Nova Spy, Nova Mac, Freedom. All 3 of these late harvest apples are sitting in my kitchen ready for eating and baking, apple crisp season is here. I adore this time of year and it’s way too brief, so off I go to get some hand sewing done on the porch. Happy thanksgiving, for the large and the the small, for each other and for crisp autumn days that sharpen our edges in the best way.

September 16, 2013

Filling a Friend’s Fridge

I have a dear friend, the indefatigable Lindsay Zier-Vogel who came over to visit last weekend. She filled my fridge. Literally. She arrived with a laundry basket of supplies, cracked a bottle of wine and proceeded to make us dinner, then also massive amounts of delicious chili and soup for the freezer. She pulled out pre-made banana bread and homemade jam and jelly. She even cleaned up.

Life is fast and full for me these days and I have a hard time keeping up with 2 little boys. I find the shifting identity that is part and parcel of staying home with the little folk challenging, sometimes downright paralyzingly overwhelming, along side the attempt to fit my own work into the days. Lately, paralyzing-overwhelm has been winning. Lindsay knows this, we chat and text often. Her act of kindness reminded me that filling the fridge of someone who’s stumbling, if you have the means and time, is one of the very most awesome things you can do.

Chili, sausage-pesto pasta, red pepper jelly, ginger jam, carrot cake and there’s also sweet potato soup in the freezer. My cup runneth over.

I imagine one day I will waltz into her house, on a day when I have my s*%@ together a little more than she (that day will totally come, ahem!) and fill it with news and booze and delicious homemade goodness. And she might just have a glimmer of just how truly excellent her instinct was to march in here last week and own the kitchen and the conversation for a while. It made a huge difference.

September 3, 2013

Party pour les Petits Pirates

Contrary to my title, I must admit I am not French at all. I am not even a bilingual Canadian except for my extensive ballet term vocabulary and my grade 11 level conjugation skills! But I do adore alliteration. So I couldn’t resist going with my frenglish title because of all the P’s! Anyways, this is the story of a party I held for small pirates, specifically my wee Gene-bean who recently turned 2 years old.

We were at our Muskoka cottage for the big day and Gene’s big 5-year-old brother and his even bigger 8-year-old cousin would be his guests for the festivities. I thought that a treasure hunt would be grand in that amazing landscape and keep lads of all ages happy. Which led me to the pirate idea. Really anything involving adventures and weapons and dress up works for these guys, thus a modest cottage pirate party was born. Of all the things concocted for this fête, the felt-on-flannel map below is my favourite. Charming if I do say so, non?

As usual I wanted to make this party as handmade as possible. I love to make and craft, I thrive on creating — for me, the act of imagining and making is part of loving-up my kids when I have the time to do it. Baking, on the other hand, I have given up on. I’m not very good at it, I don’t really enjoy it and in the end they only eat the icing. So I bought a cake with mounds of icing and decorated it so it was a little more fun! As you can see below, I just jammed a couple of tentacle fingers we had lurking in our dress-up chest into the cake (very kraken!) along with some dollar store cupcake topper ships and used the cupcake papers to surround the cake. Icing: eaten. Birthday boy: delighted. Cake: success.

The treasure hunt took the kids around the cottage and surrounding property revealing handmade pirate sashes, felt eye patches and pirate hats. From clue to clue they travelled in their new pirate duds, eventually finding some random bounty including chocolate Canadian coins, those squish coin pouches I thought died in the 80s (but was glad to find still exist, I loved those things!), little wooden airplane gliders and silly straw glasses for drinking pirate’s brew, a.k.a. Shirley Temples.

The font I found for free on dafont.com and is called Pieces of Eight. It worked a treat and included a lovely “X” for making the spot and some sabres and skulls, all necessary when making pirate-y name tags and clues.

Lastly I had to make Gene’s favourite baby dolly a wee matching pirate hat and patch. He caught his breath with delight when dolly was revealed, then immediately proceeded, with no apparent provocation, to hang the baby by his neck from a string on the window sill. Very pirate-y indeed mateys. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

August 24, 2013

End of the Nursing Epoch

Epoch ep·och (ˈe-pək, ˈe-ˌpäk) | an event or a time marked by an event that begins a new period or development | an extended period of time usually characterized by a distinctive development or by a memorable series of events | a division of geologic time less than a period and greater than an age

I knew the time was coming. And in many ways I was so very ready — to have my body back (more or less), to not be tied as intensely, as literally, to someone else. On a more practical note I am profoundly relieved to not have any more f*%#ing yeast infections on my nipples. Good times!

And yet, and yet … as I write this I feel the prickle of tears and have been a puddle of moodiness for the past couple of months as Gene weaned himself. And now it is complete. No more milk. He already forgets how to latch so when he tests out the boobs in a moment of half-sleep it feels weird for both of us and he smiles up at me and says, “done!” and snuggles in for huggy-loveies (how did I become the lady that says things like that?! But I did. Ah well.)

The end of an era, though “era” doesn’t seem like a big and juicy enough word for this event in my life. Inside it feels like a seismic shift, and the landscape of my body has altered quickly. My natural small-boob-ed-ness is returning, though things are settling a lot lower on the map of course! I walk around and feel freer, but also bereft. It’s evolution, I delight in Gene’s growth and enjoy his wee-man-ness as he finds his words and his sense of humour finds legs. He’ll be two years old in a few days. And yet.

Gene weaned in his own time, he was ready and he’s fine, I just need a little time to find my feet on the other side of this epoch in my life and body. Less than a period and greater than an age, I am ever grateful and powerfully changed for this time in my life.

A friend posted a link on Facebook to a lovely blog about mothering though somehow I found my way to this post accidentally, though so appropriately. It really moved me, it’s beautifully, hilariously written. Worth a read if you want some more on the topic.

June 17, 2013

Getting My Waldorf On with Walnut Pirate Ships

Sometimes I have to get my Waldorf on (former Waldorfers out there, you know what I mean). I feel the need for some Stockmar decorating beeswax welling up and I must surrender! And does that stuff ever last, I still have a package from my teenagehood. Great for decorating plain candles or making little figures out of. But I digress. The point was … ah yes … Rudi’s kindergarten class’s June show-and-share task was to make a craft and talk about how it was made, giving everyone (read: the teachers, clever creatures!) new ideas for the summer. He doesn’t go to Waldorf, but I insert wonder and beeswax and wool and gnomes and heavy-duty watercolour paper and primary colour exploration as often as possible/necessary into his little life!

I felt a challenge rising in my heart, and it included beeswax and natural materials (mostly). I needed to meet the task with my usual over-do-it, turn it up to 11 attitude, though my 5-year-old-appropriate crafts arsenal is rather lacking. So of course I googled and found a lovely site that I’ve bookmarked for heavy future use, The Crafty Crow, a children’s craft collective, what a fantastic idea, which led me to Small World Land’s Walnut Shell Flotilla. Brilliant. Sorted.

Then I couldn’t find walnuts in the shell, what with them not being in season and all, but eventually I sussed out some extra-organic, vaguely rotton, excessively priced ones at the health food store. I covered my sails in packing tape, the poor (wo)man’s laminating technique, not very Waldorf, ah well. I do secretly yearn for a Laminator, I cannot lie. I used the beeswax to secure the masts. Then Rudi pointed out that we needed a pirate. And yes, I still have mad skills. Behold the wee man, built in the last minutes before bedtime, 3-cornered hat, silver sabre, ah-thank-you. I am feeling smug and awesome, secure in the knowledge that I can still craft it hard when push comes to shove — or show-and-share, as it were.

Note: from my description you may have noted that 5-year-old Rudi didn’t particularly take part in the craft. Ahem. But he could have. He just doesn’t really care to that much. He’s likes watching me and I like crafting. At a 5-year-old’s level. So it works. He cracked a few nuts and jammed the masts into the wax, that counts, right?!

Note also: I should admit that because it too me so long to find walnuts in the shell, Rudi’s scheduled show-and-share day already passed. I made beads with him out of polymer clay — remember Fimo? Yeah, they still make that! So he already showed and shared those. But I’m sending these ships in, show-and-share rules be damned, once I have a craft-bee in my bonnet it’s settled. I am turning into a nightmare parent, I can already see his teachers’ long-suffering faces …

May 27, 2013

M is for May and Matryoshka (tattoo)

May has been epically busy, and in addition to my usual exploits, I got inked! Yes, tattooed, me. I always wanted one when I was a teen. However, being a practical creature and an obedient dance student, I thought I might regret it and also piss a bunch of teachers and choreographers off. But actually, I regret not doing it. And since there’s no time like the present, I researched artists last year, found Angie Fey at Archive Tattoo in Toronto and fell in love with her work. You should check it out. Extraordinary. Whimsical. Colourful. Charming. I wanted 4 Matryoshka dolls; I love them, their secret stacking, their folk-arty-ness, all the symbolism potential.

And it has been started, my left forearm is officially hardcore. The outline is done and June brings colour. I am in love with my little dolls, representative of family, carrying images of things precious to me. Wearable art — and a great conversation piece I’m discovering already! Does the moustache not charm your pants right off?! And the flowers. And the variation in grey. The little cheeks. The pleats in the scarf knots. Sigh of contentment.

Other adventures this month included a bunch of dance work with Simcoe Contemporary Dancers for their show Departure. And, you know, I managed to choreographed a work, costumed a few pieces, do lighting design and assistant stage manage some shows. I love love love me a dance show, but honestly! Over-commitment is my middle name me thinks. Truly soul filling work though.

I’m also getting prepped for sewing commissions, which include: costuming the New Actors’ Colony Theatre company in Bala, ON this summer, a couple of dance shows in Toronto, and 2 wedding dresses! Plus my own sewing work (ha ha). And the usual mothering. Ahem. Working from home with an one-and-a-half-year-old is insane. I constantly over-estimate how much I can get done, but this period shall pass, I know. So I mostly put aside my own work and just hang and nap and do things that don’t involve pointy objects during the daytime! My shop can happen any time, the little man will grow past needing me like this very soon, never to return to this magical/overwhelming time.